At RSA 2019, biometric authentication and blockchain took the spotlight as security insiders debate new ways to improve identity management.

“The biggest opportunity I think in the market is identity,” said Adam Burke, vice president of sales and operations at Quest, a managed services provider based in Roseville, Calif.

Burke’s comments come as organizations face an increasing number of phishing attacks, largely because of weak or default passwords. Research finds that weak passwords were responsible for over 80 percent of phishing attacks, according to a Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report. And to make matters worse, hackers are compiling lists of passwords and selling them on the dark web to be used in account takeovers.

“The market has been approaching security the same way for the last 12 to 15 years,” said Kelly Bissell, senior managing director of security at Accenture.

As a result, biometrics are gaining rapid adoption.

“This becomes the one key that you can use for everything front door, tablets, phones, PCs and business applications on a day-to-day basis,” said Nicholas Buchanan, chief technology officer at Armor Scientific, as he showed off his company’s new digital identity token. The product launched on Monday and those behind it want the channel to play a key role in bringing it to market.

“And ultimately our solution is easy to deploy and there are a lot of services on the backend for partners to tie into the systems to make our solutions work,” said Scott Moore, chief revenue officer at Armor Scientific.

The identity management market is expected to reach 7 billion dollars by 2024. For more coverage, watch CRNtv’s video included in this article.